Thanksgiving is always hit and miss in Hong Kong. It is not a Chinese holiday, obviously, and is not even celebrated by most of the foreigners here. Most people get into Christmas. Even the locals celebrate, more or less. Christmas is more about shopping than anything else, but at least we get some decorations and Christmas songs.
My roommates are Canadian, so their Thanksgiving is on a different day than mine, but they understand the holiday. We try to celebrate, but that is not always easy.
My first Thanksgiving in Hong Kong was very Chinese. I had no problems with the Chinese food, but I missed dessert. Finding pumpkin pie in China is like trying to find Bigfoot while sober.
A few years ago, my roommates and I went to Otto e Mezzo, a fancy, celebrity chef Michelin star Italian restaurant. It was too crowded and too famous, but the food was genuinely Italian, which is hard to find in China. Good food, but no pumpkin pie.
Last year was my most American Thanksgiving since moving to Hong Kong. It was in Tokyo. Tokyo has more than enough great places to eat, but we found a restaurant run by some American expats who were doing a special Thanksgiving meal. I don't ordinarily seek out American food when I go to Japan, but this was a special occasion. The food was good, but the pumpkin pie was disappointing.
This year, we did Thanksgiving in our apartment. For several years, I lived in a tiny apartment without a kitchen. Hosting Thanksgiving dinner was not an option. Now, we live in a large apartment, by Hong Kong standards, with something that is even harder to find, a real kitchen.
Most of my friends are not American, but there are enough Canadians, and everyone likes a home cooked meal. There were no football games on TV or any parades with giant Snoopy balloons, but since most of our guests were not American, they never noticed. The food was good. That's the important part. I did not make any pumpkin pie because I have never seen a real pumpkin around here. We have Chinese pumpkins, which are not bad, but not the same.
During the planning stages, Lily wondered if I wanted to invite Mthandeni. Before our first date, I thought that would be strange. After our first date, it made more sense. I don't know if this was our second date, but if it was then our first date was on my birthday and our second date was on Thanksgiving. If we don't wait until Christmas for our third date, things are going to start getting ordinary a lot faster than usual.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Birthday Surprise part 2
After my birthday date dinner, I wanted to take a walk on the beach. The restaurant is very close to one of the cleaner beaches in Hong Kong, depending on water quality on any given week. Mthandeni had other plans. He was in a hurry to get somewhere after dinner.
A walk along the beach could have been a romantic first date. It is a great place to talk, which I consider an essential first date activity. He took me ice skating instead. That was a surprise. Ice skating is far from the most popular activity in Hong Kong, but there are a few rinks spread out around the city. When he brought up the subject during dinner, I mentioned that as a Minnesotan, I had plenty of experience. In Hong Kong, you have to skate inside a heavily air conditioned building. In Minnesota, practically any winter lake or river will do. Mthandeni grew up in a place where it snows about once every hundred years. Ice skating was not his thing, but he wanted to go anyway. I thought that was a nice change of pace. Not every guy is willing to do something new where he will most likely fall flat on his butt a few times on a first date.
When we got laced up and went out to the ice, I understood why he was in such a hurry to get me there. About 25 close friends, acquaintances and people I vaguely recognized yelled out, “Surprise.” And it was. I thought I was on a first date with a new guy. I was, but he and Lily worked out a way to get me to a surprise birthday party. I never suspected anything. Partly because it was not my birthday yet and partly because I had no idea that Lily and Mthandeni knew each other existed. They met at the same party where he met me and worked out their plan soon afterward.
Not surprisingly, Mthandeni fell flat on his butt a few times while skating. Thankfully, he took it in stride and never let embarrassment get in the way. People were falling like sacks of potatoes on the ice, so he was not alone. Hong Kong is to winter sports what Los Angeles is to public transportation. Those of us from colder climates spent more time vertically.
The good news is that Mthandeni was definitely not expecting to get some action on the first date. That was never going to happen anyway, but when your date ends at an ice skating rink with about 25 close friends, acquaintances and people you vaguely recognize, it is not especially romantic. No matter what happens in the future, this is one first date I will definitely remember.
A walk along the beach could have been a romantic first date. It is a great place to talk, which I consider an essential first date activity. He took me ice skating instead. That was a surprise. Ice skating is far from the most popular activity in Hong Kong, but there are a few rinks spread out around the city. When he brought up the subject during dinner, I mentioned that as a Minnesotan, I had plenty of experience. In Hong Kong, you have to skate inside a heavily air conditioned building. In Minnesota, practically any winter lake or river will do. Mthandeni grew up in a place where it snows about once every hundred years. Ice skating was not his thing, but he wanted to go anyway. I thought that was a nice change of pace. Not every guy is willing to do something new where he will most likely fall flat on his butt a few times on a first date.
When we got laced up and went out to the ice, I understood why he was in such a hurry to get me there. About 25 close friends, acquaintances and people I vaguely recognized yelled out, “Surprise.” And it was. I thought I was on a first date with a new guy. I was, but he and Lily worked out a way to get me to a surprise birthday party. I never suspected anything. Partly because it was not my birthday yet and partly because I had no idea that Lily and Mthandeni knew each other existed. They met at the same party where he met me and worked out their plan soon afterward.
Not surprisingly, Mthandeni fell flat on his butt a few times while skating. Thankfully, he took it in stride and never let embarrassment get in the way. People were falling like sacks of potatoes on the ice, so he was not alone. Hong Kong is to winter sports what Los Angeles is to public transportation. Those of us from colder climates spent more time vertically.
The good news is that Mthandeni was definitely not expecting to get some action on the first date. That was never going to happen anyway, but when your date ends at an ice skating rink with about 25 close friends, acquaintances and people you vaguely recognize, it is not especially romantic. No matter what happens in the future, this is one first date I will definitely remember.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Birthday Surprise part 1
I went out on a rare date Saturday night. It was rare because I usually have less than one date a month. Even more surprising was that it went well. I don't know what he might be thinking, but I'm definitely up for a second date.
We went out on Saturday night. My birthday is in the middle of the week, so this was the closest weekend. Once upon a time, in the deep, distant past, my boyfriend and I used to do something special on my birthday. Those days are over. But it was nice to go out and be treated like someone special on a day relatively close to my birthday. I don't exactly live the movie star lifestyle, but I like being pampered on my birthday. Everyone should take 1 day out of 365 and let the people around you treat you like a princess.
I met Mthandeni at our Moon Festival party at the big house back in September. He was attracted to me right away. And why not? I was still working on Harry at the time, so I turned a blind eye to other suitors. After Harry went down the drain, I called Mthandeni. He was pretty surprised. I think if someone has not called you in two months, it is safe to assume they never will. Then again, you never know. Men have rules about how long you are supposed to wait to call. Women don't. At least, not as far as I know. If there was a meeting, I was not invited.
Most people call Mthandeni “Danny”. Probably because it sounds similar and is easier to pronounce. They should call him “Denny” since that is how the end of his name sounds, with a French accent. I have decided to call him Mthandeni because his name is neither Danny nor Denny. There is nothing unique about the name Danny. Mthandeni is nothing but unique, at least to me.
Mthandeni is from South Africa, which is not all that exotic around here. As a former British colony, we get a lot of Australians, Indians, Canadians and South Africans. The British are the least exotic. I doubt they would take that as an insult. I have never met a single British person who thought he was exotic. As an American, most of the locals see me as a Brit with a funny accent. We are questionable, but not exotic.
Mthandeni took me to the Stoep, a South African restaurant with a surprisingly laid back atmosphere. Hong Kong is a city in a hurry, so it is always nice to find those places where you can stop and take a break. I don't know anything about South African food, and my date was from there, making this a good choice. I have sampled a pretty good slice of the world in Hong Kong, but South Africa is new to me. Mthandeni said the owner is from Namibia, but I was never going to notice the difference.
The Stoep had hummus, so I had to try it. I have been spending a lot of time in Israel lately, where every restaurant has their own hummus recipe, and every single place makes it better than I ever can at home. Hummus is such an easy thing to make, and very easy to make mediocre. The Stoep's hummus was far from the best in the world, but that is like comparing a pizza from New York to a pizza from China. Their bread, however, was quite good. It used to be hard to find good bread in Hong Kong, but a few bakeries have started opening up.
We went out on Saturday night. My birthday is in the middle of the week, so this was the closest weekend. Once upon a time, in the deep, distant past, my boyfriend and I used to do something special on my birthday. Those days are over. But it was nice to go out and be treated like someone special on a day relatively close to my birthday. I don't exactly live the movie star lifestyle, but I like being pampered on my birthday. Everyone should take 1 day out of 365 and let the people around you treat you like a princess.
I met Mthandeni at our Moon Festival party at the big house back in September. He was attracted to me right away. And why not? I was still working on Harry at the time, so I turned a blind eye to other suitors. After Harry went down the drain, I called Mthandeni. He was pretty surprised. I think if someone has not called you in two months, it is safe to assume they never will. Then again, you never know. Men have rules about how long you are supposed to wait to call. Women don't. At least, not as far as I know. If there was a meeting, I was not invited.
Most people call Mthandeni “Danny”. Probably because it sounds similar and is easier to pronounce. They should call him “Denny” since that is how the end of his name sounds, with a French accent. I have decided to call him Mthandeni because his name is neither Danny nor Denny. There is nothing unique about the name Danny. Mthandeni is nothing but unique, at least to me.
Mthandeni is from South Africa, which is not all that exotic around here. As a former British colony, we get a lot of Australians, Indians, Canadians and South Africans. The British are the least exotic. I doubt they would take that as an insult. I have never met a single British person who thought he was exotic. As an American, most of the locals see me as a Brit with a funny accent. We are questionable, but not exotic.
Mthandeni took me to the Stoep, a South African restaurant with a surprisingly laid back atmosphere. Hong Kong is a city in a hurry, so it is always nice to find those places where you can stop and take a break. I don't know anything about South African food, and my date was from there, making this a good choice. I have sampled a pretty good slice of the world in Hong Kong, but South Africa is new to me. Mthandeni said the owner is from Namibia, but I was never going to notice the difference.
The Stoep had hummus, so I had to try it. I have been spending a lot of time in Israel lately, where every restaurant has their own hummus recipe, and every single place makes it better than I ever can at home. Hummus is such an easy thing to make, and very easy to make mediocre. The Stoep's hummus was far from the best in the world, but that is like comparing a pizza from New York to a pizza from China. Their bread, however, was quite good. It used to be hard to find good bread in Hong Kong, but a few bakeries have started opening up.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Harmony On Spring Hill
As soon as I came back from my first trip to Jerusalem, I started writing about it. The purpose of the trip was to shoot a small part in a small movie. It was difficult to write about the trip without describing the movie and I was not comfortable describing a story written by someone else. I'm sure I could have gotten permission from the copyright holders. A book about the making of the movie would be free publicity. But the more I wrote about it, the more I felt like I was taking credit for someone else's story.
Then I decided to change the movie. Instead of describing the actual movie, I made up my own story. I did not sit down and write a screenplay, but I created enough of a story to write about the making of that movie. That made it much easier to describe the plot and characters since I was not describing anyone else's material.
I have changed the names of pretty much everybody in previous books, and I might have exaggerated some character traits for the purpose of telling the story. This time, I had too many people. It takes a large crew to make even a small, independent movie. When you are in the middle of it, these are all important people. Tom Cruise might be the most famous person in all of his movies, but without hundreds of people doing their jobs around him, he would be nothing. We had a much smaller crew than any Tom Cruise movie, but I could not describe the key players without turning it into a Tolstoy epic. From personal experience, I knew that would be a bad idea.
As soon as I decided to combine several real people into one fictional character, I knew I had to make the entire book a work of fiction. I had a fictional movie plot and fictional people. It just made sense to go full fiction. That tore the whole thing wide open.
When writing about real people and describing something that actually happened, there is a certain responsibility to cover the story accurately and portray the people faithfully. When writing a work of fiction, you can do absolutely anything you want. Not only could I change the movie plot, but I could create composite characters and purely fictional characters out of thin air. I could change locations and time frames. I could have the sky open up to an alien invasion while zombies and dinosaurs defend the Earth. I did nothing quite so stupid, of course, but in a non-fiction book, someone would have questioned such a thing. In fiction, you can have all the dolphins fly away and thank us for the fish.
Harmony On Spring Hill is a work of fiction loosely based on factual events. Eagle-eyed readers might notice that the main character is pretty similar to me. The story is about what I did in Jerusalem, more or less, so I made myself a fictional character. Why not?
Harmony On Spring Hill is available for e-book pre-order on Amazon. It will be released in all formats on December 21st. After that, it will be available at Barnes & Noble, Tower and all the usual retailers.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
2 For 1 Sale
2014-2016
RIP
Our long national nightmare is finally over. The “experts” on TV will analyze what happened for a while, but the two year campaign is dead and buried.
I'm not a big fan of changing the Constitution. I think it should be left well enough alone, save for something like abolishing slavery or letting women vote. But I would wholeheartedly support a constitutional amendment limiting presidential campaigns to less than six months. People could announce their candidacy after 4th of July, the primaries could be in August, conventions in September and election day in November.
This would make it much harder for the two corporate parties to spend a billion dollars getting their boys elected. They would still spend entirely too much money, but it might give other parties a chance to compete. Americans are supposed to like competition, but our political system guarantees that only two teams get to play. Imagine the NFL with only two teams. How exciting would that be?
The most obvious benefit, of course, would be far fewer campaign commercials in far less time. I don't know anyone who loves watching campaign bullshit for two straight years. Making it shorter would probably burn out fewer people and increase voter turnout.
This is one reason it would never happen. The Republican and Democratic parties count on low voter turnout. If 100% of eligible voters actually showed up, or even more than 60%, other parties would win a few elections. The people in charge will never let that happen. The question is, why do we?
Friday, November 4, 2016
Declare the Pennies On Your Eyes
Americans love to complain about taxes, especially during an election. Obviously, even 1% is too high if you don't want to pay anything, but there are people throughout Europe paying 40%, 50% or 60% of their income in taxes. I don't know any American who pays anywhere close to that. The average is somewhere around 15%, according to a one second Google search.
Taxes are like gas prices. Americans blame whoever the president is when gas prices go up, as if he sets the rates. When the national average went up to US$3/gallon, there was almost a revolution. At the time, gas cost about US$10 in Hong Kong, and that was not even close to the highest in the world.
When I lived in the United States, I paid around 20% in income tax, but I was single without deductions. The more deductions you have, the less you can pay. And anyone married with children is automatically at a lower rate. Then there are state taxes. Unlike smaller countries, the United States also has income tax based on your state. A few states don't have any income tax, while most are much lower than the federal rate. In Minnesota, I always paid around 7%.
Giving the government 27% of your income seems very high to people in oil rich Arab countries, but is pretty low for people in Sweden or Holland.
I don't live in Minnesota anymore, so I never pay state taxes. But I still get to pay federal taxes. That always surprises my non-American friends. All American citizens, regardless of where they live, are supposed to file taxes. Even if I never go back to the United States, for whatever reason, I am still legally required to file for the rest of my life. Now, if I really never went back, and did not mind them taking away my passport, I could simply not pay anything. They are never going to come and get me.
Like all Americans living in China, I get to pay American and Chinese taxes. Fortunately, the highest Hong Kong rate is somewhere around 15%. Since I am far from the richest person in Hong Kong, I pay a lot less. I'm usually closer to 8%.
That does not mean I'm currently giving 28% of my income to two different governments. The American tax rate is based on all income from anywhere in the world, but the Chinese rate is only based on whatever I earn in China. That affects the math, especially since I'm now earning an income in three different countries.
Since I am now working in Israel, I will get to list all of that income on next year's US tax return. And I get to pay taxes in Israel. Fortunately, China does not care about my Israel income and Israel does not care about my Chinese income. Only the United States wants a piece of everything.
The Israeli tax code might just be as complicated as the American system, but I have a few things on my side. I'm not an Israeli citizen, so I automatically pay a lower rate, and I don't live in Israel, so I'm in some kind of “specialist” category. I don't know all the details yet, but it looks like I can save myself a lot of hassle if I limit all future visits to under 30 days. If I ever stay for over 120 days, I will still be a foreigner who needs a visa, but I will be taxed like a resident.
I don't know if there is a moral to this story. I put myself in this situation. But it is funny that I will never be a billionaire, yet I pay more in income taxes than Donald Trump. I pay taxes in three different countries, yet I complain about taxes less than any American I know. I would much rather deal with all the bureaucracy every year than make so little money that I don't have to pay anything.
Taxes are like gas prices. Americans blame whoever the president is when gas prices go up, as if he sets the rates. When the national average went up to US$3/gallon, there was almost a revolution. At the time, gas cost about US$10 in Hong Kong, and that was not even close to the highest in the world.
When I lived in the United States, I paid around 20% in income tax, but I was single without deductions. The more deductions you have, the less you can pay. And anyone married with children is automatically at a lower rate. Then there are state taxes. Unlike smaller countries, the United States also has income tax based on your state. A few states don't have any income tax, while most are much lower than the federal rate. In Minnesota, I always paid around 7%.
Giving the government 27% of your income seems very high to people in oil rich Arab countries, but is pretty low for people in Sweden or Holland.
I don't live in Minnesota anymore, so I never pay state taxes. But I still get to pay federal taxes. That always surprises my non-American friends. All American citizens, regardless of where they live, are supposed to file taxes. Even if I never go back to the United States, for whatever reason, I am still legally required to file for the rest of my life. Now, if I really never went back, and did not mind them taking away my passport, I could simply not pay anything. They are never going to come and get me.
Like all Americans living in China, I get to pay American and Chinese taxes. Fortunately, the highest Hong Kong rate is somewhere around 15%. Since I am far from the richest person in Hong Kong, I pay a lot less. I'm usually closer to 8%.
That does not mean I'm currently giving 28% of my income to two different governments. The American tax rate is based on all income from anywhere in the world, but the Chinese rate is only based on whatever I earn in China. That affects the math, especially since I'm now earning an income in three different countries.
Since I am now working in Israel, I will get to list all of that income on next year's US tax return. And I get to pay taxes in Israel. Fortunately, China does not care about my Israel income and Israel does not care about my Chinese income. Only the United States wants a piece of everything.
The Israeli tax code might just be as complicated as the American system, but I have a few things on my side. I'm not an Israeli citizen, so I automatically pay a lower rate, and I don't live in Israel, so I'm in some kind of “specialist” category. I don't know all the details yet, but it looks like I can save myself a lot of hassle if I limit all future visits to under 30 days. If I ever stay for over 120 days, I will still be a foreigner who needs a visa, but I will be taxed like a resident.
I don't know if there is a moral to this story. I put myself in this situation. But it is funny that I will never be a billionaire, yet I pay more in income taxes than Donald Trump. I pay taxes in three different countries, yet I complain about taxes less than any American I know. I would much rather deal with all the bureaucracy every year than make so little money that I don't have to pay anything.
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